My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (30 page)

ably the truer thing is that they’re just not talking about me at all. I was a somewhat restrained male— I don’t want to say conservative because

that has more negative connotations. I was reserved. I’m the same as a

female. Nothing changed. I was an identical twin, but it’s like twins

who are so similar in many ways, but they each have their own differ-

ences. I’m just the other half now.”

Some friends have dropped away. I ask about Karl, the buddy with

whom he went to gun shows. Chevey waited for the occasion and told

him about his plans, and Karl seemed to take it in stride. It was only

later that Karl admitted that he’d pulled over to the side of the road

and had a meltdown. And now he’s sort of dropped away.

On the other hand, Toney, the maintenance supervisor from the

pre- Ellen past, has been a supporter, and made a real discovery relat-

ing to the voice problem.

“At first, when it started dropping during a conversation, Toney

would say, ‘Voice.’ It worked, but it always threw me off whatever I

was talking about. Then he came up with a signal, thumbs- up. He

does that now, my voice rises a register, and somehow the brain doesn’t get sidetracked.”

She’s delirious when someone fails to “read” her and tells me about

an incident when she was at a benefit dinner for the foundation. First

of all, she was invited to replace someone who had cancelled.

“They didn’t need to call me,” she said, “I would never have known

the difference. And that has happened over and over again.

“I sat next to a woman I didn’t know, and we hit it off. We talked to

other people at the table, but she and I kept talking. It was a relaxed setting in a beautiful home, we were all laughing and carrying on, and

then it emerged that this very laid- back woman practices law in three

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My Sister

different countries. That’s very characteristic of the people here— very casual, then you find out they are retired admirals or diplomats.

“Then an hour into the party, she asked me about my past and I

mentioned that when I got out of college back in the late sixties I went to Wheat and Company as a stockbroker. She knew of the company

and said ‘You must have been the first woman stockbroker there.’ And

of course I glowed. It had been a long day, I felt tired and my voice

wasn’t doing very well, and I just said, ‘You don’t know how good that

makes me feel.’ And I explained why.”

There’s a cocktail party to introduce me to her friends, and I’m

impressed by their cosmopolitanism. One’s an ex- professor, another a

woman in real estate, still another a Frenchman who loves Virginia.

I meet Cindy, one- half of a couple who are sort of Pine Mountain’s

First Family, perched on the uppermost aerie of the mountains, re-

spected by all. Cindy’s husband John, who’s agreed to speak with me

the following day, is in Omaha— he’s a consultant in what’s called cor-

porate citizenship, advising companies on how to carry out charity and

philanthropy, whether or not they should start a foundation. He turns

out to be, like Cindy, open, genial, intelligent. In the course of our

conversation, he will characterize himself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, but there are plenty in both camps who are far less enlightened.

“Pine Mountain is not a microcosm of the world,” he reminds me.

“It’s good for Ellen. It’s not clique- y. I’m a golfer and skier but also interested in the Nature Foundation. We full- timers are mostly retired,

fairly smart, open- minded, a good mix. There’s a jock contingent,

maybe a little more conservative. The Nature Foundation where she

spends so much time is more liberal, not all tree huggers; a lot of them like to ski.

“The real issue is understanding. A golf friend of mine met Ellen

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Ellen Is a Welfare Mudder

and the next time we were playing he told me he met this new woman,

and when they shook hands, they were the biggest hands of any woman

he’d ever met. I told him she used to be a he. ‘Oh, gay?’ he asked. ‘No.’

‘A cross- dresser?’ ‘No, physically changed,’ I told him. ‘How in the hell do you do that?’ he asked. I think I finally made him understand that

it was not just surgery, it was hormones, it was a whole kind of life

change. It was an education. Most men are thrown by it because they

can’t understand how or why anyone would . . .” (He decorously omits

the obvious.)

John feels the Christian conservatives have it all wrong in thinking

that people can be seduced into being gay, transsexual, whatever. The

daughter of one of their friends was a compulsive cutter, but when she

was hospitalized, and had some biopsies done, they found a growth in

the brain, and she was treated successfully.

I learn more of the mental divide between the present company,

who live on the mountain, and Pine Mountain’s other community,

down in the valley. Like two tribes in ancient Greece, they regard each other with mutual incomprehension. The mountaineers, who are definitely closer to Spartans than the valley is to Athenians, look down on the softies, wondering why they would live in those little plots with

neither views nor amenities, a sort of suburb without an urb. The val-

ley people can’t imagine living on the mountain, where it’s always ten

or more degrees colder, fine in the summer, but summer is short com-

pared to those long winters when residents are often marooned by

snow, icy mountain roads, electrical shortages, a rugged life.

Chevey always loved mountains, from the time we spent summers

as children in High Hampton in North Carolina. I, too, loved High

Hampton, and went to camp in the mountains of North Carolina. But

I’m a fair weather friend. I hate the cold, not to mention wind and fog.

Ellen’s apartment, 3,500 feet above sea level, is sometimes in the

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My Sister

clouds. We’ll wake up, unable to see a tree forty feet away, while it’s sunny down in the valley. The mist will sometimes hover all day. But

whatever the weather, she enjoys sitting by the window, drinking her

coffee, communing with what’s there and what’s not there. I may not

love the mountains, but I begin to understand something of the bond

these people share, a love of nature that overrides class, gender, ori-

gins. They’re adventurous without being compulsive or self-

congratulatory (or maybe just a bit, in contrast to the soft mudders

below).

I look at the plants again, and realize that many I had previously

classed as artificial— the African violets, the ivy— are in fact real. I notice things I hadn’t noticed before: the exquisitely hand- made hon-eysuckle to which is attached a paper caterpillar one inch long, and the green- red hummingbird, made of wood, held to a blossom by the tiny

end of his beak.

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c h a p t e r f i f t e e n

Looking Backward and Moving Forward

“R
emember that fear I told you about,” our conversation continues,

“that I’d be in the Village shopping center and some little girl would

come with her mother and say, ‘Why is that man dressed like a

woman?’ It finally came true,” says Ellen with a laugh. “I was volun-

teering at the Nature Foundation where I stand behind the desk and

man (well,
woman
) the cash register, gift shop, and give advice. It was a busy morning, your voice gets tired, you’re tired, not doing your best job. There were two young women, asking about hikes; I was showing

them the map and explaining. They had one or two children, one lis-

tened beside her mom, and right in the middle— we’re talking about

different trails— the girl pipes up and says, ‘Are you a man wearing

lipstick?’

“I gasped inwardly, thought a minute, and said, ‘No, I’m a

woman, but I used to be a man.’ The little girl went off to look at

something else.

“Her mother looked at me and said, ‘You handled that very well.’

When you’re tired, things slip. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and I’m glad I got it behind me.

“Remember how I told you that when I go into a ladies’ room with

friends, I don’t talk? If I’m in a stall and someone hears my voice, it might cause a panic. I have visions of police waiting for me when I

come out. But if people just see me I’ve got a pretty good chance of

passing. When I’m on the phone— that’s when I always get ‘Yes, sir.’ I

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My Sister

call to make a reservation, I say ‘It’s Ellen Hampton, E- L- L- E- N,’ and it’s ‘Yes, sir, how may I help you?’

“There are times now when I’ll be at a social gathering or a meet-

ing and a man will put his arm on my back or hand on my shoulder, or

grab my hand and hold it longer than normal, and it sends a delicious

electric shock through me, like a lightning bolt. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but my imagination runs wild. Don’t tell me anything

important for the next thirty minutes, because I won’t take it in.”

Has there been anything like a hit or a flirtation? I ask her.

“One day I was volunteering for the Nature Foundation block

party, a barbecue, so I’d get to know people. I was hosting a card table, signing people in, giving them a name tag. There was a long line, and

people would arrive at the table one by one. It was another of those

times when I was tired, frantic, and forgot about the voice. This guy, a hippie type with a ponytail and camouflage pants, arrived at my table,

and was filling out a form. Then he crouched down near the card table

and the next thing he says is ‘I love your deep voice.’

“ ‘Oh, I’m trying to raise it,’ I said. But he went on and on. He got

his application, then he came back again and again. The woman next

to me was having a ball. ‘He’s looking at you,’ she’d say, then ‘He’s hit on you again.’ I was getting more and more irritated but I was trapped: I represented the Nature Foundation and couldn’t just leave. By the

end of the evening, as soon as the time was up, I scurried out the back door.

“Another time I was coming into my apartment. It was November,

a cool evening. I’d been hiking. I was in old clothes, and bringing in

firewood from the outdoor pile. As I walked in a man came out, a guy

in his forties, in bicycle clothes, fairly bright and distinctive. I go in, put the firewood down, go back for another load, and pass him a second time.

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Looking Backward and Moving Forward

“The next day, I had business to do in town. I came home, laid the

fire, and was getting ready to have a bit of dinner, when there was a

knock on the door. I asked who’s there and it was— I’ll call him ‘Jack’; he was renting one of the apartments in the building. He’d brought

some firewood for me, so I had him put it down by the fire and made a

quick decision. He was good- looking, a real hunk. I invited him to

have a drink. For three hours we had a wonderful evening, talking,

laughing. While he was there, there was no problem with the voice. It

wasn’t great but I kept the pitch up. It turned out Jack was actually

fifty years old, an extreme athlete who did marathons, mountain cy-

cling, had his own company, a girlfriend in the town where he came

from. He would stop the conversation and pay me a really nice compli-

ment, saying how beautiful I was, something specific about my looks.

“About an hour into it, he said, ‘I can’t believe, as good- looking as

you are, any man would ever divorce you or let you divorce him.’ As

I’ve said, I don’t get into the fact that I’m a ‘T’ unless it’s somebody I think I’ll have a relationship with, and most of the times not even

then, only when the conversation seems to require it, and if the subject can slide in easily.

“I paused for a long time, thinking he’s really put me on the spot.

How to answer? So I told him the truth. I thought that he’d found me

attractive enough after the previous night, that maybe he was just after easy sex. Which I actually found a morale booster. And the fact that

I’d gone for an hour or more without blowing it.

“He said something like, ‘I wondered about that,’ but I don’t really

think he had. It was a nervous reaction; he was caught by surprise. It

turns out he has two grown sons, and he’s a little unsure about the

sexual orientation of the one in college. If it’s true, the boy is probably scared to death of his dad finding out anything. He’s a nice, gentle guy

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My Sister

but also very macho. He doesn’t act it but he looks it, with the bulging muscles.

“I tell him at the end, ‘Have a conversation with your son, tell him

about the wonderful evening you had with a transsexual; that will let